I & I Editorial BoardI&I Editorial
The lockdown hammer landed hard on California and several other states Monday. At one time it seemed absurd to think government officials’ pandemic orders were a dry run for future attempts to confine and subjugate the country to mitigate global warming. It’s time we rethink that.
Observant and cunning politicians have gone to school since March and are now likely convinced they can use the pretext of a climate emergency to control Americans and break the back of capitalism. No, we’re not likely to see the open-ended lockdowns we’re enduring during the coronavirus outbreak. Those would be too obvious. Politicians can be sneaky sorts so we expect something more subtle and incremental.
For instance, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who clearly relishes having near absolute control over the most populous state in the country, could issue an executive order next summer which says, beginning in January 2022, all businesses except the few deemed essential must be closed every other Friday, and car travel on those days will be restricted solely to those who can demonstrate an absolute need to be on the roads.
Or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whose pandemic lockdown rules have been among the most prohibitive, pointless and imbecilic (and have stoked efforts to impeach her), might decide she has the authority to limit the automobile miles driven each month by Michiganders, ration fuel, and dictate thermostat settings in private homes.
We can imagine Democratic governors limiting church attendance in the name of the environment. It’s inessential, according to the belief system of the political left, which places its faith in the god of government, and declares that it will have no other gods before it.
And thus the transformation of America would begin.
Never mind that some researchers say the economic lockdowns have had little effect on global temperatures. Temperatures are not what the global warming scare is about. The objective of climate alarmism is to regulate a free people and take down capitalism and replace it with a collectivist economic system enforced by government.
Our fear is that through its experience with the pandemic lockdowns, the country will be conditioned to just take whatever is dished out by power-hungry officials, elected and unelected. The fact the Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, could say “now is the time to do what you’re told” with minimal condemnation and no demands that he be fired is worrisome.
At least Dr. Scott Atlas, a Trump coronavirus adviser, said in response to Whitmer’s petty tyranny that “the only way this stops is if people rise up. You get what you accept.”
Will we rise up when blue state governors rob of us of our liberties in the name of protecting the climate? Will we refuse to accept the decrees of the Biden-Harris administration when it imposes its version of the Green New Deal on the country; outlaws automobiles that run on fossil fuel; bans fracking, which has provided the country with clean, cheap energy; and traps the U.S. in an international climate agreement that’s expensive, obstructive and at the same time useless?
We don’t want to be pessimists, but we’re unlikely to stand up then unless we stand up now.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
As a libertarian I admire personal freedom within our raucous and free-wheeling society more than anything else, while respecting that we must observe the rules of the American road. But those rules represent the rub, for my rule of as much freedom within a strong and coherent society as possible is far different from the top-down autocracy that our betters in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, the ascendant and very loud cohort of liberals gaining traction as Joe Biden gets his nascent footing, want to impose on the rest of us. The election showed clearly that we are a centrist country and that progressive ideas are found only in specific far left zip codes, but never mind that the majority of us desire moderate governance, for the minority on the far left is ready, willing and able to force us to do their biding. Why? Because, boys and girls, they are smarter than the rest of America and, with a potentially pliant new president, they see a way forward. They are the ‘useful idiots’ of Vladimir Lenin’s description, but only if we let them install a regime of privation, privation of common sense and freedom. Countering them is our challenge.
Well they ARE a dry run for how to totally control the population of this country. Will we allow it? We have so far, maybe it’s time we rebelled and said “he!! no, no more”!
We have become a nation of lemmings. reminding us of those in Jonestown, Guyana, who drank the Kool-Aid and dove off that proverbial cliff to their deaths. We have become a nation of Karen’s running around after people who don’t comply. We have been set up for the next round and your article is right on the money. Rahm Emmanuel has ben proven a genius.
Excellent points!!! Covid has been used as a pretense for the unsolicited vote by mail schemes. We aren’t just befriending totalism; we are decaying into it. Is there no solution to any of this?
Is there a CO2 concentration that will absorb all the available IR that can be absorbed? Are we perhaps there? If so, added CO2 won’t matter, right?
Global Warming/Climate Change is the biggist scam in the entire history of all Mankind its just another Trojan Horse we get from the Globalists and the Hardline Greens